For The Sake of Clarity - The Digital Tavern

Living in Southern California certainly has its benefits. The weather is perhaps the best in the country, there’s great live music, entertainment and most of the airports, even the smaller regional hubs are well served by the airlines. So when one needs to flee southern California, there are always many options.

Another benefit of Southern California is both its extensive [… Read More]

Seems that the only traveling I find myself doing these days is either up and down the California coast. While my return to trip to Israel in December was an exception, I discovered this week that low mileage traveling combined with stellar live music can be quite satisfying to this nomadic wanderer. I got lucky. Lucky in several ways. First, [… Read More]

Time for a quick update on the Digital Tavern. Pardon the diversion, but this post will focus on some personal and business items that I hope you’ll find interesting or at least somewhat amused.

First, it’s all the hype and there’s no doubt you’ve seen it on the news, heard strangers talking about it in line at Starbucks or the [… Read More]

I’ve got a few video composites from my motorcycle trip around the world posted on my WorldRider account on YouTube. About a week ago I received a notification from YouTube, ironically the message was in Portuguese, that my “Riding Bolivia” piece [… Read More]

It was an idyllic southern California night complete with a burning orange and red sunset, gentle breeze swaying postcard palm trees and John Hiatt with North Mississippi Allstars (NMAS) tearing up the stage at Humphrey’s By The Bay in San Diego. Toward the end of his 90-minute set Hiatt said “the weathermen said it was going to rain…I guess they [… Read More]

Demme’s Masterful Portrait of Neil Young in Concert

It took a few years until I appreciated the music and genius of Neil Young. My high-school girlfriends all loved Neil Young, Crosby Stills Nash & Young and all the other derivations. His music didn’t fit into the profile of my young teenage angst. I was geared to Led Zeppelin, Blue Oyster [… Read More]

BBC reports that a Beatles song from the White Album has been voted as the worst song of all time. I'd have to disagree. Take virtually any song by Foreigner or Journey and it'd score much lower in my book. What's your worst song of all time?

I missed Scott Alexander’s phone call this afternoon. His voice on the message was somber and monotone. “Big Al,” he cracked. “The legend is gone. Scott Muni is dead.”

Growing up in a small Connecticut suburb of New York City I spent hours and hours listening to Scott Muni on WNEW-FM. [… Read More]

My new Apple Airport Express arrived earlier this week. Within 45 minutes I had it connected to my wireless network here and streaming music to my home theatre sound system. About the size of a cigarette pack, it compacts a Airport Base Station in a portable device that adds ethernet and USB ports for expanding the network or [… Read More]

Using netTunes, Airport Express and AirTunes. Isn't this what the Digital Hub was supposedly to be all about?

It was just about a year ago when I completed converting my more than 1,200 CDs into AAC/MP3 format where they now reside on a 2000 vintage G4 Cube. The Mac Cube is my Music Server. And since relegating this [… Read More]

I noticed that AllMusic.com quietly updated their site and identity with a complete redesign. If you are a music fan and savour the history, discography, reviews, guest performers and nearly anything you could ever want to know about your favorite artists, then get over to AllMusic and see what you've [… Read More]

So the last time I checked in I was off to spend a long weekend in the sunny Southern California community of Santa Barbara. The draw? Good friends, good music and good wine. Left the laptop at home and headed up the coast.

Highlight of the amazing weekend was a benefit concert paying tribute to Gram Parsons, the legendary musician [… Read More]

Ban The iPod On Campus! At Work!

Good God. I see it coming.

Even the driest of technical or trade publications aren't immune to the lure of hype that supermarket tabloids and Rupert Murdoch are famous for. In this article in the every exciting Enterprise Security Today, Esther points me to the article where the headline [… Read More]

A rival to the iPod? This is interesting.

BTW, more updates from China later today…

Ok. So maybe my title is a bit on the tabloid side of media hype. But according to an article in tomorrow's New York Times Rob Glaser, Real CEO offered to create a “tactical alliance” with Apple in an e-mail message to Steve Jobs.

Apparently there was a bit of “and if you don't” [… Read More]

This just in. Clear Channel announced a few hours ago that it would permanently pull The Howard Stern Show from its airways and has been fined $495,000 for indecency stemming from the Stern Show. Clear Channel who last month temporarily pulled the show from its roster of stations after the FCC began its witch hunt for [… Read More]

Another gig at the infamous Coach House in San Juan. The Coach House is one of those love/hate venues for me. I love the fact that they attract top artists such as Hiatt, Al Stewart, Adrian Belew, Peter Fripp, JJ Cale, Bruce Cockburn, Robben Ford, David Lindley, Norah Jones and many more. But the venue has questionable acoustics, [… Read More]

It has been a busy week or so since I last was able to put some time into quality blogging. So I'll try to catch up with a number of posts today and tomorrow.

Music. I'm going to do a little housekeeping on musical activities of the last couple weeks.

Al Stewart – Live at The Coach House, San [… Read More]

iPod

iPod Mini Comes in 5 colors!

Jobs is talking iPod success. The holiday quarter for the iPod, Apple sold 700,000 + iPods. This means now Apple has sold more than 2 million iPods. Apple is showing the iPod sales curve.

Marketshare for Apple in MP3 market: 31% and 55% in revenues. (no December figures inlcuded in this market) [… Read More]

Years ago I saw Pink Floyd play live at Madison Square Garden. The real Pink Floyd, that is. The band that contained all members — especially the brain child of the band, Roger Waters.

I was a teenager naive, excited and alone in the Big Apple. Sitting in excellent seats while the band performed the entire works of both the [… Read More]

Wow. I just found out that Robert Palmer died of a heart attack today. So we've seen Johnny Cash, Warren Zevon and now Robert Palmer. Both Zevon and Palmer in their 50's. Ouch.